The Jewish Leonard Bernstein
‘To write a great Broadway musical, you have to be either Jewish or gay. And I’m both.’
View ArticleThe Jazz Baroness
Hannah Rothschild remembers her distinctly unconventional great-aunt.
View Article‘Entartete Musik’
If Zubin Mehta hadn’t heard the recording, we wouldn’t all be here tonight.’ Thus spoke Barbara Zeisl-Schoenberg on October 4th 2009 following the opening concert of the Vienna Philharmonic...
View ArticleBloch
From Geneva to New York: radical changes in Ernest Bloch’s view of himself as a ‘Jewish composer’ during the period 1916-1919.
View ArticleSaid, Barenboim and the West-East Divan Orchestra
Since its formation in 1999, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has prompted an energetic mix of rapture and hostility. Founded by conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and scholar and writer Edward...
View ArticleNeither Fish Nor Fowl: The Jewish Paradox of Russian Music
In his 1931 short story, ‘Awakening,’ the writer Isaac Babel recalls one of the great cultural spectacles of his childhood in fin-de-siecle Odessa. ‘[In] the course of ten years or so,’ he writes, ‘our...
View ArticleAmos, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Bob
One of the first original compositions that the young Bob Dylan debuted in folk clubs in New York upon arriving from Minnesota in 1961 was ‘Talkin’ Hava Negilah Blues.’ Introduced by Dylan as ‘a...
View ArticleSadie was a Lady: Prostitution in Yiddish Song
Der feter iz geshtanen in di rogn Un di bobe a hendlerke in gas Eyn brider zitst in ostrogn Un di shvester tra-la-la-la-la My uncle stands on street corners My grandmother does business on the street...
View ArticleThe Broom and the Kettle: Satire in the Cabarets of Tel Aviv
In a newspaper editorial celebrating the tenth anniversary of Tel Aviv’s most beloved satiric cabaret, Hametateh, poet Leah Goldberg begins by quoting the following saying: ‘The wounds which a lover...
View ArticleYasmin Levy – Barbican – 2 Reviews
The Ladino diva focuses on modern Spanish for her new album launch
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The Last Train To Tomorrow
In 2009 the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester approached me to write a work for their whiz-bang Children’s Choir. My answer was an immediate “yes” and an idea followed swiftly. I had in mind the underlying...
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Jacob’s Ladder
The folk music festival Jacob’s Ladder was founded in 1978 by British Jews Menachem and Yehudit Vinegrad, who were then new immigrants to Israel. Held every spring on the verdant shores of Nof Ginosar,...
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Jewish Glastonbury
The Summer festival season is once again here, and for the hordes of us Jewish festival-goers, it’s time to dust down the tents, and go back to our outdoor desert roots. First on the calendar for any...
View ArticleJew’ish’ Proms
The big show is Fiddler On The Roof. Thousands in the Royal Albert Hall will be shrugging with Bryn Terfel, as Tevye, about the mysteries of “Tradition”, and attending the wedding wondering “when did...
View ArticleHebrew Folk
If you squint while you’re watching them play, they look a bit like Peter, Paul and Mary. A blonde woman in between two dark haired men, at times gathered around a single microphone, singing folk...
View ArticleA Jewish Musical Odyssey
“As Jewish practice, learning and knowledge diminish over time, my concern is that Holocaust memory is emerging as the dominant feature of Jewishness in America.” So said Charles Krauthammer in a...
View ArticleAutumn Music
How many significant secular musical figures were the children of cantors? The journey from the synagogue to the concert hall and beyond is a story that America made famous, through the life of Al...
View ArticleVladimir Jurowski & John Zorn
London’s Southbank Centre has made an art of creating festivals with themed programmes filling the concert halls and spilling out into the foyers and streets on subjects covering everything from...
View ArticleThe Other Tchaikowsky
In an act of poetic justice, the other Tchaikowsky, André Tchaikowsky—pianist, composer, and posthumous celebrity—is finally receiving the recognition he craved in his lifetime. His opera, The Merchant...
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